"Yeah, what is that?""I found your SUV. It's in a big room down in the belly of the spaceship.There is a little red sports car down there also. I asked and it wasapparently owned by a third guy that was here. I haven't found any sign ofhim.""Yeah, you won't either. The Grays dismembered him before you woke up. Therewas nothing left of him when they were done. It was gruesome and I had nearlyput that sight out of my mind, thanks for bringing it up." I nudged her a bithumorously and a bit seriously. It had been a horrid sight."Oh. I didn't know, sorry.""Forget it. So you found my truck, huh? I had figured they left it on the sideof the road.""Go figure." She smiled and hugged me. "Happy birthday. I didn't realize howold you were until Isaw your license."Page 70ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Old! I'm not old!""Compared to me you're ancient." She laughed."How old are you, then?" I asked, smirking. "What, fourteen, fifteen . . .""Smartass! I will be twenty-three in December. Keep it up and I won't show youthe other present Imade you.""What other present?" I shrugged my shoulders."This one . . ." Mikhail, turn the bathroom wall into the viewscreen showingthe alternate engine room.Okay, Tatiana.She had been teaching Mikhail personality it appeared.The bathroom wall resolved into the screen we usually used for navigation andan image of one of the rooms in the belly of the alien ship appeared in thefield of view.What's this, Tatiana?It's a warp drive!She grinned back at me."A warp drive! Does it work?" I verbalized."Why of course it does, Steven! Well, we think it will. It hasn't been testedyet.""How does it work?" I was astounded."It uses the Alcubierre warp theory with a van den Broeck bubble and someClemons field modifications," she said knowingly.How did she know about Clemons?I accidentally thought on the top layer of my mind and it was communicated.How did I know about Clemons? Mikhail told me. He is apparently some Americanphysicist and is responsible for inventing the propulsion system for the U.S.Air Force vessel that shot us out here. The Grays know all about him for somereason.On a deeper level of my mind I immediately thought of Senator Grayson from theSSCI. During his abductions they must have learned all of our National Defensesecrets. This was no good, but there was nothing I could do about it rightthis second though."So, the Grays knew how to make a human-designed warp engine?" I askedTatiana."Sure they do. They don't need one since their engines are thousands of timesfaster and more energy efficient. But they are easier to build than it is torepair the alien space drive."Mike! Why didn't we think of this?We should've thought of it after all, I had all that knowledge downloaded intome. I was beginning to realize that having knowledge and being smart were twodifferent things. I would have to get Mike to work on improving my cleverness,wit, and general problem-solving abilities.Sorry, Steven. It never occurred to me. Perhaps you were sidetracked with theother problem we have been working on."How long have you been working on this?""Only about a week or so. It was hard doing it when you weren't around, sinceyou are always around. I got chances here and there when you would go off tothe bridge by yourself. What are you doing up there anyway? Oh well, doesn'tmatter. I would've asked for help but I wanted to surprise you with it. You'resurprised, right?" She looked concerned only about the surprise.Tatiana had a knack for saying a lot in one breath. A lot of times she wouldonly seem interested in the last thing she would say. Until later, of course,when she would ask why I never answered her question. Women!"Surprised! I had no idea! This is great. How fast does it go?""Well, why don't we sit down and eat some cake and then we'll try it out. Butmy initial calculations suggest that it will go about thirty-seven hundredtimes the speed of light. We should be able to get home in a few hours.Page 71ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlMikhail and I made some modifications to the field coil design that made itabout ten times faster than the Clemons design. But enough of that, blow outyour candles before they melt the cake!""Uh, okay." I bent down and blew on the candles. They wouldn't go out."Ha, ha, ha." Tatiana giggled like a schoolgirl.Mike, make sure they go out this time when I blow.Okay, Steven."I must be getting old," I put on a show for Tatiana and then blew the candlesright out.Tatiana frowned. "Aww! You cheated. Cheater." She punched me on the arm andfrogged it pretty good."Shit!" I cursed and punched her back, but not nearly as hard.CHAPTER 15We decided that we would warp back directly to the Moon and contact the peoplewho we'd learned lived there. It made sense that if they were the ones tryingto defend the Earth from the Grays then the Moon was where we should take ourship and all the knowledge we had discovered. The Grays apparently knew almosteverything about the human race that there was to know. Neither of us likedthat. If they ever decided to conduct a final invasion, they would have morethan enough information not to mention technological advancement to totallywipe us out. That brought up another point. Why hadn't they wiped us outalready instead of playing with us for thousands of years? Nothing made anysense. What was the Gray motivation? Why were they toying with us andabducting us and killing some of us? It didn't matter. Tatiana and I didn'tlike it, and it had to be stopped.We dropped out of warp on the far side of the Moon and I'll be damned if therewasn't a huge lunar base there. Three warp ships with U.S. Air Force markingsmet us with full force. Fortunately, Tatiana had the foresight to suggest wesit in our safety chairs and had them materialize before we warped. We had totake evasive maneuvers to keep from being blasted back out into deep spaceagain. There were no g-forces this time since we were inside a warp bubble andthe spacetime inside the bubble was simple one-gravity space. The alien'squantum string spacedrive would allow a ship to travel much faster but itrequired some type of inertial damping system. I think I like the warp drivebetter.So we didn't really need the chairs. One of the vessels fired several warpmissiles at us. We warped past Mars and up out of the ecliptic plane and werestill being pursued by the missiles. Mike flew the ship and I had acommunications system set up and began hailing the Earth ships. Tatiana foundthe weapons and blasted one of the warp missiles off our tail. We finally wentto maximum warp speed and left the other missiles in our space dust!We warped out a few minutes and then went back to the Moon. This time Icontinuously hailed the
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